Customer Reviews

The Singles

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Although I have been around since the early 1950s and have been actively involved in listening to classical music for the last 40 years, I had never heard of or seen classical music 45s. During the 20th century classical music was always at the forefront of recording technology before popular music moved in. First 78s then LPs and finally CDs so why not 45s? I remember my first 45 as being the Everly Brothers' WAKE UP LITTLE SUSIE followed by Jerry Lee Lewis' WHAD' I SAY. I eventually had quite a collection of 45s, all popular singles. Classical music and the LP came later. So when I ran across this title, I just had to investigate and eventually purchase it. Turns out that the 45 came along at the same time as the LP (duelling formats like VHS and Beta) and the LP won out but the 45 was ideal for single cuts. Back in the early 1950s Deutsche Grammophon converted some of their 78s into 45s and then added a number of new ones before going LP only in 1965. This collection releases for the first time some of those recordings.

This 2 CD set has over 2 1/2 hours of music and features a number of well known (and some not so well known) selections performed by the top DG artists of the day. Pianist Shura Cherkassy, guitarist Andres Segovia, violinists David & Igor Oistrakh, soprano Irmgard Seefried, tenor Fritz Wunderlich and more are on hand to perform over 30 different selections from celebrated composers like Mozart, Beethoven, and Haydn to some real rarities like Morton Gould's BOOGIE WOOGIE ETUDE and Rolf Liebermann's SUITE AFTER SWISS FOLKSONGS. Although many of the tracks are in mono, the sound quality is excellent as you would expect from the Deutsche Grammophon ORIGINAL MASTERS series. This set is a fascinating treasure trove and the perfect gift for the classical music lover who has everything. Hurry though. It's already officially out-of-print although there are a number of affordable new and used copies still available. You can sample them as well.